Ubuntu Unleashed 2013 Edition: Covering 12.10 and 13.04, Eighth Edition

Deleting a Directory with rmdir

To delete an empty directory named directoryname, use the following command:

matthew@seymour:~$ rmdir directoryname

You can remove a directory in a different location by changing what is after rmdir. To remove a directory in /home/matthew/music, if I am already in my /home directory, I can use the following:

matthew@seymour:~$ rmdir music/directoryname

Or from anywhere using an absolute path, I can use this:

matthew@seymour:~$ rmdir /home/matthew/music/directoryname

Or from anywhere using a path shortcut, I can use the following command:

matthew@seymour:~$ rmdir ~/music/directoryname

The directory must be empty to be removed using rmdir. However, there is a way to remove a directory with its contents using rm